Flame in the Dark (Soulwood #3)(116)

“Exams?” Mud said, startled. I kicked her under the table.

“Twice a week to devotions,” Daddy bargained.

“Twice a week,” I agreed. “But we only make up one missed service per week if we have to miss due to a case.”

“You’ll bring a note from your boss.”

“I’ll do no such thing.”

Daddy squinted at me and my bossy tone.

“I’m your child. I don’t lie.”

Daddy nodded slowly. I noticed he was rubbing his belly, where the medical problem was, the one that might show him to be nonhuman in tomorrow’s surgery. “No note. Clothing?” he asked. “I insist on my daughter being properly and demurely dressed.”

“Dresses to below her knees or pants. No bare legs and nothing tight-fitting until she’s eighteen.”

“Who sits with her when you’rn on a case?”

“She comes to headquarters with me. Plus, I take off and do computer work at home. I already spoke to my bosses. They’ll work with me on this.”

A silence thick with tension filled the space between us. Daddy drummed his fingertips on the table and I realized where I got the nervous habit. He stopped instantly and shot me a look. I stared back at him with a Gotcha look.

“The mamas and I’ll talk it over. You’uns get on outta here.” Mud and I stood. “And Nell? You’un take care a your sister.”

“Yes, sir. Always.”

“I want her to have a dowry, or whatever townie women get when they don’t marry. I want all my girls protected.”

“I’ll see that she’s protected. I’ll see that she gets land. And education. And money. And while we’re negotiating, I need a rooster.”

“A what?” Daddy asked.

“A rooster. A big one.”

Daddy shook his head at the vagaries of womenfolk. “Mud, you know which one to give your sister.” He dropped his chin and pointed a single finger to the door. Mud and I took off, stopping by the chicken coop on the way down the road. “You sure it’s the one?” I asked, watching the huge rooster strut around.

“That rooster ain’t nothing but trouble. He starts yelling at three in the morning and he pecks the feathers offa the small hens. Mama’s been threatening to feed it to us in a stew pot for weeks now. I’m surprised it’s still struttin’ and still has its head.”

Good enough. I put my hand on the earth and reached. Small vines stretched up and snared the rooster’s ankles. Mud gasped and then laughed. “I need to learn how to do that.”

I held out my fingers to show her the leaves that were already sprouting from my fingernail beds. This was a demonstration, and worth any long-term effects of working or reading the land. “I can teach you, and you can grow leaves. Or you can not learn and stay human.”

Mud’s expression fell and she said, “Ohhh.”

I opened the door of the chicken coop and slipped a bit of cloth over the rooster’s head like a hood, wrapping the ties loosely. Then I tied off the rooster’s feet, tore away the vines that had imprisoned him, and carried the huge bird to the back of my truck. It musta weighed twenty pounds.

Guilt swept through me. I wasn’t sure about any of this. I was feeling my way through it all. I had talked it over with Jane Yellowrock and she called it flying by the seat of her pants, which made no sense to me at all. But . . . now I had a plan. And a rooster.

? ? ?

“What we’uns doin’?” Mud asked. “It might kill us, just sittin’ here.”

“It might try.” I got out of the truck and picked up the rooster. Carried it closer to the tree, watching it. Feeling the tree through the ground. It was aware. It was angry. And it was my fault.

From behind me Mud said, “That ol’ tree’s mean as a snake.”

“You feel that?”

“I feel it.”

“I feel it too,” a soft voice said.

I smiled without turning. “Tandy. Thank you for coming. You know my sister.”

“I do,” the empath said. “What is my job, precisely?”

“This is the vampire tree. It’s sentient. It needs a place to grow, a way to reproduce, and a job. I tried to make that happen and it didn’t listen because of . . . well, because of an interference problem. That problem has been resolved, but the tree has taken over a good two acres of the compound and it’s started killing pets.”

“That will never do,” Tandy said.

“I want you to help me tell it to behave.”

“I see.” Tandy’s tone suggested that he didn’t see at all and didn’t know how to go about talking to a vampire tree.

“You think you can get close to the tree?”

“It likes me,” Tandy said. “So yes.”

“Okay. You get close. I’ll sit right here. With your keeping it calm and my hands in the earth, I’ll tell it the facts of life, survival, and death. Then we’ll sacrifice a rooster.”

Tandy was silent a moment. He said, “We’ll do what?”

“When I claim land I use blood. I want to claim the tree and all its saplings, and the land they live on. Jane Yellowrock said it may take blood to accomplish that.”

“I see,” he said again. But it was clear he didn’t. Tandy stepped to the vampire tree and put his hand on the bark. He leaned his head in and touched it. Then he laid his entire body against the tree. Minutes passed. “Now,” he said quietly.